China on Thursday welcomed the United States’ (US) decision to end its China Initiative. Calling the initiative a “poisonous legacy” of the Trump era, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said during her regular press conference that the program “should have been abolished long ago.”
The China Initiative was launched in 2018 by the US Justice Department (DoJ) under the Donald Trump administration. It aimed to combat Chinese economic espionage and trade secrets theft. However, critics of the program have argued that the initiative stifled academic research, racially profiled Chinese researchers, and undermined the US’ competitiveness in research and technology.
As part of the initiative, US authorities had become increasingly cautious of academics participating in economic espionage for the Chinese government. According to The New York Times, the initiative “has slowed research and contributed to a flow of talent out of the US.” The program also drew flak for not being measured in its approach, with authorities accused of indulging in racial profiling.
In fact, it recently emerged that FBI agents had spent nearly two years following Anming Hu, a Chinese-born scientist. The university was forced to fire him after federal agents told the university where he held a tenured position that he was a Chinese operative. However, no evidence of espionage was found against Hu and in September, a judge took the rare step of acquitting him on all counts.
Speaking to this effect, Hua noted that the program was “a tool for a handful of anti-China forces in the US to abuse the concept of national security and go all out to contain and suppress China.” “It exacerbates racial discrimination in the US, severely harms Asian-American groups, and also poisons the atmosphere of China-US mutual trust and cooperation,” she remarked.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen Delivers Remarks on Countering Nation-State Threatshttps://t.co/9efalHmuZ4
— National Security Division, U.S. Dept of Justice (@DOJNatSec) February 23, 2022
Addressing a revelation by the American media that the China Initiative “set targets first and carried out investigation accordingly,” Hua argued that most cases “under this initiative did not involve intellectual property or commercial theft” but ranged “from fraud to misrepresentation to tax evasion,” which she said “hurt the interests of all.”
She concluded by calling on Washington to stop “hyping up the so-called China threat, seeing China as an imaginary enemy, smearing and suppressing China with fabricated pretexts, and disrupting and undermining normal China-US exchange and cooperation in all sectors” and instead focus on doing more “to promote the steady development” of bilateral relations.
Unnamed “experts” cited by Chinese state-owned media house Global Times said that the initiative’s cancellation did not necessarily “mean that the US is no longer suppressing Chinese scholars, but is simply a gesture of goodwill at a time when the situation in Europe is heating up.”
China’s comments come after the DoJ announced on Wednesday that it was scrapping the program after a months-long review ordered by the new head of the National Security Division, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen.
“While I remain focused on the evolving, significant threat that the government of China poses, I have concluded that this initiative is not the right approach,” Olsen said. Instead, the current security landscape, which includes Russia, Iran, and North Korea in addition to China, require a “broader approach,” Olsen said.
Interestingly, just last December, Harvard University professor Dr. Charles Lieber was convicted of lying to United States (US) authorities about his ties to the Chinese government.